After the success of 2015’s “Jurassic World” movie, I had high hopes for the newly released sequel “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.”
Even with the film rated PG-13 for intense sequences of science-fiction violence and peril and has generated over $934 million since it opened June 22, I think I might have reached my limit on dinosaurs.
Fallen Kingdom features Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, B. D. Wong, and Jeff Goldblum reprising their roles from previous films in the series, with Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Ted Levine, Isabella Sermon, and Geraldine Chaplin joining the cast.
The film opens six months after the Jurassic World theme park incident on Isla Nublar, a small team of mercenaries arrives on the abandoned island to collect DNA from the remains of the Indominus rex, skeleton at the bottom of the park’s lagoon.
After successfully collecting a bone fragment, the surviving team members barely escape the park’s lagoon-inhabiting Mosasaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex.
During the hurried evacuation, the lagoon gate is accidentally left half open, allowing the Mosasaurus to escape into the ocean.
Three years after the Jurassic World incident, a U.S. Senate hearing in Washington, D.C. debates whether Isla Nublar’s dinosaurs should be saved from an impending volcanic eruption.
Jurassic Park’s famous mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm (Goldblum) testifies that the dinosaurs should be allowed to perish to correct John Hammond’s mistake of cloning them.
At the same time, Jurassic World’s former operations manager, Claire Dearing (Howard), has created the Dinosaur Protection Group to save the animals.
After the Senate rules against rescuing the dinosaurs, Claire meets with Hammond’s former partner, Benjamin Lockwood (Cromwell), at his Northern California estate.
Lockwood and his aide, Eli Mills (Spall), reveal a plan to relocate the dinosaurs to a new island sanctuary, but they need help tracking Blue, the last living Velociraptor.
Although they are estranged, Claire decides to recruit Jurassic World’s former Velociraptor trainer, Owen Grady (Pratt).
Things really heat up when they get to the island and have to deal with a bunch of money-hungry mercenaries and a ticking time-bomb volcano.
The film relies heavily on older Jurassic tactics like an animal stampede, intelligent Velociraptors and the moral quandary of cloning.
Sadly, it’s the same argument that has been part of the films since the beginning and after 20 years of Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs, it’s getting stale.
There’s an untitled third Jurassic World film slated for release in about three years.
I can only hope that it brings everything together and ends the series with some dignity.